


The Movement - A Marketplace Novella

by poeticmotion



Category: The Marketplace Series - Laura Antoniou
Genre: Activism, Alternate Universe - BDSM, BDSM, Black Character(s), Canon LGBTQ Character, F/F, F/M, Gen, Heavy BDSM, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Character of Color, LGBTQ Female Character, LGBTQ Female Character of Color, M/M, Master/Slave, Multi, Occupy Wall Street, Protests, Sexual Slavery, Social Justice
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:40:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28165638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poeticmotion/pseuds/poeticmotion
Summary: The Marketplace - a secret world underneath the fabric of our own where the dreams of those who wish to be owned in consensual slavehood can come true. But no man or group is an island, and sometimes the world demands that even those who live outside the lines take a stand.In the years since the events of the Inheritor (the last canon novel of the Marketplace cycle), the world has profoundly changed, Maintaining the secrecy and safety of the Marketplace is exponentially harder in the social media era. Political divides threaten to tear apart the Marketplace. And as society lurches into 2020, the Marketplace is struggling to adapt to the pandemic.One quiet May night, a man is brutally murdered by Minneapolis Police. Protests erupt across the world. For Marie Salazon, Tequila Gold, and other people of color and allies in the Marketplace, a moment of reckoning is at hand. This is a moment at which every human must stand up and make themselves heard to be on the right side of history. But how can they ensure that they, and the clients they've placed in the Marketplace, are able to stand up and fight within the strictures of the milieu to which they've committed their lives?





	1. No Justice

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to Black Lives Matter, and to street medics everywhere.
> 
> Canon-compliance: I generally prefer writing canon-compliant fanfic. In canon, this takes place twenty years after the Inheritor (2001). However, after speaking with Laura, I’ve decided to compress the timeline by ten years, which would make the canon characters included here 7-10 years younger than they would be in a strictly canon-compliant story, in order to make it plausible for some of these characters to be actively participating in street actions and protests (Geoff Negel would be seventy if I stayed canon-compliant, for example, whereas in the story he is sixty.) 
> 
> Verisimilitude: I have served as a street medic at protests across the eastern and midwestern United States during 2020. Just about everything that happens during the street medic sequences is something that happened to me, that I witnessed with my own eyes, or in a few cases something that happened to a comrade I trust. The characters are fictional, and specific location or timing details are changed both for OPSEC and storytelling / plot purposes, but there’s nothing fictional about the situations.
> 
> Staying in my lane: I’m white, and one of the things I have struggled with as a writer when reflecting on 2020 and the things I went through is that so much of the story of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, the Second Civil Rights Movement, the Summer of Wrath, or whatever other pithy nickname one might apply to this year’s events is not my story to tell. Street medic is a protester support role. The greatest honor of my life has been to march and protest and serve this year alongside protesters of all colors, but both as an ally and as a street medic, I don’t belong in the limelight in this context. Too often, narratives from white writers overshadow those of POC, and I don’t wish to become a spokesperson for a movement that I support and fight for but is not mine.  
> This novella is partially a love letter to one of my favorite fictional universes, partially a way to satiate my curiosity about how the Marketplace would have evolved to meet the current times, but it’s also partially my attempt to work through how to tell my story as a street medic while staying in my lane so I can write an original story for a wider audience. 
> 
> CW: Racial violence, police violence. I tried to handle it as tastefully and without specific and/or visceral descriptions where I could, but it’s there.
> 
> Character list (in order of appearance):  
> Chris Parker, 50 - Trainer of Trainers, North American region of the Marketplace, Leader of the Regents  
> Geoff Negel, 60 - ‘Master Trainer’  
> Robin Cassidy, 44 - Slave/companion of Siobhan Donnelly (gifted by Aiden Donnelly)  
> Beth Mizrahi, 27, OTG name: Yael - Daughter of Ron Avidan, nephew of Chris Parker. Currently apprentice trainer to Marie Salazon and field leader of the street medic team of Revolutionary Service, LLC (Marketplace-based disaster relief and civil action support volunteer organization)  
> Christopher LaGuardia, 18, OTG name: Paladin - Son of Michael LaGuardia, street medic, freshman @ Yale.  
> *Marie Salazon, 41, OTG name: Fleur - New Orleans-based Regents trainer / spotter, founder of Revolutionary Service, LLC, Black Lives Matter organizer  
> *Quentin Yardley, 51, OTG name: Cardinal - Marie’s former owner, Atlanta-based spotter.  
> **Travis, 28 - trainee in Marie’s training house.  
> **LaNadia, 31 - trainee in Marie’s training house.  
> Layton Turner, 55 - Master Trainer, Brother Trainer To Chris Parker, Marie Salazon  
> Stuart, 40, OTG name: Phoenix - Seattle-based Master Trainer  
> *Kitten, 28, OTG name: Hellkitty - Marie’s slave and personal assistant.  
> Spiro, 65 - Los Angeles-based spotter  
> Kameko Sakai, 22, OTG name: Onesan - Daughter of Tetsuo Sakai, Japanese Trainer of Trainers. Junior Trainer of Chris Parker, girlfriend/submissive of Beth Mizrahi, street medic with Revolutionary Service, LLC.  
> **Hans, 36, OTG name: Linebacker - Marketplace slave specializing in personal security, Owned by U.S. Senator, former German Army combat medic, street medic.  
> Tequila Gold, 45, OTG name: Railroad - Marketplace slave specializing in personal security, street medic security team lead
> 
> * Original / canon-ish character - Original character previously appearing in Marketplace anthologies  
> ** Original character - Never appeared in canon
> 
> With thanks to Ky and Bishop for feedback and ideas, and to Laura for letting me bring Marie, Kitten. and my other OC characters back to play in her Marketplace sandbox once again.

##  **Part I: No Justice**

_Jefferson County Detention Center, Louisville, KY_

_09/25/20_

It wasn’t Chris Parker’s first time in handcuffs. It wasn’t even his first time wearing handcuffs in front of a police officer, although it had been a few decades. He wasn’t thrilled with the situation, but it wasn’t anything that felt strange.

Having _any_ respect for Geoff Negel? _That_ was something that felt deeply strange to him. 

Geoff wasn’t exactly comporting himself with dignity, but he was here. That was more than Chris would have expected of him; Geoff said all the right things, of course, but taking a stand for something that didn’t directly benefit him was not something in Chris’s previous estimation of his character. 

“Over here,” the cop said, putting a hand on Chris’s shoulder and guiding him roughly toward a line of semi-open chain-link booths in one corner of the receiving bay. Chris let the cop unfasten the handcuff from one wrist and fasten it to the chain-link fencing; he didn’t make it any easier for the cop but he also didn’t resist. He sat down as bidden on the plastic bench within the first person-sized bay.

“My lawyers are going to have a field day,” Geoff said, seated next to him. “This is a violation of our rights and…”

“Mr. Negel, you’re getting a small taste of what people of color in this country face every single day,” Chris interrupted. “What you think of as your rights is actually, for the most part, your privilege. Rights are something your lawyers can argue in court because you have the means to acquire good lawyers.”

He was saved from a reply by a cop coming to take Geoff for processing. “Come on, gramps,” the cop said, unlocking Geoff from his booth. Another familiar face replaced him, a female cop cuffing a woman in her fifties in the now-unoccupied booth. “Fancy meeting you here, Chris,” Robin said brightly.

Of all the places to cross paths with so many of his old friends, old flames, and old enemies, the processing unit of the Louisville, Kentucky jail was... _unexpected_.

_#_

_A drabble is a story of exactly 100 words._

_Louisville, KY_

_09/25/20_

“I’ve got a really bad feeling. If I was going to kettle ( _note 1_ ) us, this is where I’d do it,” Beth Mizrahi, Marketplace trainer and volunteer street medic, said to Chris LaGuardia, her partner. The march was passing through a chokepoint, long buildings to each side of the street blocking any way out but the ends of the block.

The loud report of a projectile weapon echoed through the urban canyon, followed by two more. Beth tapped her earpiece. “Shots fired, shots fired Main & Hancock!” she snapped into her mic. “Let’s go,” she snapped at Chris. They ran toward the gunfire.

_#_

_2018 Academy Keynote Speech, Presented by Marie Salazon_

_The Danberry & Ellis Jazz Coast Resort, New Orleans, PA _

_05/12/18_

Marie had been in the Marketplace for almost twenty years, a slave for twelve years, a spotter for twelve years, and a spotter/trainer for four, but she’d been a Black woman since the day she was conceived. She knew what the Marketplace had done for her life, but she chose her own way of paying forward the debt she owed those who came before her. And the speech she was giving to a ballroom full of the Marketplace’s best and brightest represented a large payment toward that debt. 

“People of color make up a growing proportion of Marketplace clients and associates in the United States, but we’re still very underrepresented compared to the society around us,” Marie said, pacing across the stage, keeping the audience with her as much with her movement as her words. “This is understandable when you account for the cultural baggage that comes along with entering service in a nation that, only a few generations ago, condemned people of our heritage to do so for life without any choice, under brutal conditions.

“I won’t bore y’all with too many statistics, but on average, people of color in the North American region remain in the Marketplace half as long as white clients. They are 40% less likely to renew their contracts or return to the block after their first contract, 71% more likely to break their contracts, and half as likely to even make it to the block, meaning the investment in spotting and training them is wasted. and each dissatisfied client is potentially a serious security risk for the entire Marketplace.”

“And ain’t _none_ of that due to a lower quality of client,” she said, her accent shifting to a N’awlins drawl and dialect, regathering the attention of the few audience members who had started to drift away. Code-switching ( _note 2_ ) tended to do that. She shifted back to her more academic style of speaking. “Minority clients who train under trainers and spotters of color have a notably higher rate of success than others. And while the societal pressures in countries with a history of racial injustice and chattel slavery do make a difference, that’s something we can correct for at the spotter level by filtering out those we believe are ill-suited for the Marketplace due to these factors. I humbly submit my track record as proof this is possible, and I’ve written extensively on my process.” 

“Our responsibility is and always will be to our clients, to treat them not only fairly, but equitably as individuals with their own needs, to give those who need the Marketplace a genuinely safe environment that supports them. It’s good for our clients, it provides better clients for our Owners, and it’s simply good business

“Black lives matter. Black clients matter. And I honor my North American Marketplace colleagues for standing with us on this. This year, my mentor Layton Turner, my sister trainer Keisha Landry, and I unveiled a new proposal, with the backing of the Regents, to enact a series of initiatives designed to make the American branch of the Marketplace a place not of equality, because we all _know_ that ain’t happenin’,” she paused for the crowd to laugh, “but of equitability.”

“Under the aegis of the Regents, we’re establishing a mentorship program to identify and develop trainers and spotters of color. Members of the Ebony Association of Trainers, Agents, Spotters, and Surrogates, and yes, we realize now what the acronym spells out, mistakes were made,” she paused again for laughter, “ will be available to all North American spotters and trainers in good standing to provide interviews and cross-checks on spots, as well as joint training, for clients and potential clients that are people of color. It’s not mandatory, obviously, but we think the value will be obvious.”

“We’ll also be instituting mandatory training sessions for Owners and potential Owners before they can bid on people of color. This part was controversial, but make no mistake; we do a pretty good job of weeding out problematic individuals already, but six times in the last decade we’ve had to remove clients from an Owner and ban them from the Marketplace for misconduct toward a person of color, hugely disproportionate to the overall rate.”

“Finally, we’ve developed a model contract template for clients that are people of color. This includes elements such as reducing the time between check-ins with their trainers or agents for these clients. The other major new contract clause we’re introducing here in North America requires some explanation,” Marie said. “The single most stressful event of my decade in a collar was Hurricane Katrina ( _note 3_ ). I was born here, grew up here, was spotted here. I was in Georgia serving my third contract when Katrina hit. I lived in a bubble and was happy there; the outside world only existed when my Owner needed me to notice it. And then one morning I woke up and retrieved the newspaper for my Owner, and I usually paid no attention but I saw my house on the front page. Underwater.

I panicked. My Owner woke up and not only was I completely unprepared, I was frantically trying to figure out how to get home. I’m lucky; I belonged to a man of honor… hi Quentin!”, Marie waved at a graying man sitting in the back of the room, and he smiled and waved back, and the room laughed again. “He tracked down my loved ones, and then assigned me to the relief crews his contracting company sent to help in the aftermath.”

“We’ve conducted dozens of interviews of clients and former clients in the last few years, and this is far from uncommon. One of the big stressors for clients, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, is that bubble. That’s true across all clients, but especially true for people of color, because we pull clients from the most selfless, giving, productive parts of the population across all demographics and in disadvantaged communities, those are the ones that dive in to help, and there's a tremendous amount of guilt for people of color becoming clients, not only due to the sociocultural baggage attached to even consensual slavehood, but because they can’t be there for their families and communities. We had three clients from St Louis break contracts during the Michael Brown protests, for example. 

“The Ebony Association of Trainers, Agents, Spotters, and Surrogates,” she paused for a lighter round of laughter, “is developing a new initiative for the North American region that will deploy volunteer teams to sites of natural disaster or civil unrest, with logistical support from Danberry & Ellis. Membership on the team will be open to all Marketplace members, including clients, with training held periodically throughout the year. Clients with the proper clause in their contracts can deploy with the team and be able to help in communities, with proper supervision. Just as with the Academy, the Playhouse, or other special events, substitutes will be arranged to take their place, or otherwise compensate Owners for the use of the client. And, of course, this is spelled out in contracts, so Owners aren’t forced to participate; they can choose to purchase clients whose contracts don’t include any of these provisions.”

“As I said, I’m very proud of the support my fellow Marketplace professionals have given to,” Marie sighed theatrically, “EAT-ASS.” The room laughed again. “You can thank Keisha for that acronym by the way, she swears it wasn’t intentional but we know better.” Keisha Landry, Layton Turner’s heir apparent, turned beet red in the audience. 

“But anyway, enough business. This year marks twenty years since I joined the Marketplace. Twelve years in a collar, and then the last eight as a spotter and occasional trainer. This organization, and my _choice_ to sign my body and soul into slavehood, made me who I am today. The support and motivation of my peers, my Owners (and _thank_ you Mr. Quentin Yardley for the _excellent_ motivation back when you owned me,)” more laughs from the audience, “have made every day of my life far more of a joy than I could have ever imagined back as a young girl in the lower ninth ward of this city.”

“On behalf of the North American Trainers and Spotters, and especially Mr. Chris Parker, Trainer of Trainers, who ordered, I mean asked me to give the keynote address on his behalf,” the room erupted into even more intense laughter, as Chris Parker’s distaste for giving keynote speeches was well-known, “thank you all for joining us, and although we’ll all see _plenty_ of each other at tonight’s parties,” one final round of laughter, _“_ as far as the formalities are concerned, we look forward to seeing you at next year’s Academy, hosted by the Brikār Tlād corporation, and the Southern Asian Trainer / Spotter Caucus at the Banyan Casino & Resort in Bangkok.” A round of applause followed her back down to her seat. 

_#_

_A triple-drabble is a story of exactly 300 words._

_Louisville, KY_

_09/25/20_

“ALLIES TO THE FRONT!”

The street erupted into chaos. Five years of training and service had given Beth her uncle’s preternatural sense of calm, but as Chris used his linebacker-sized body to lead them through the crowd, she fought to control her adrenal dump. 

A line of riot cops and armored vehicles blocked the street under the I-65 overpass. Beth glanced up and saw snipers on rooftops at multiple angles; a police helicopter hovered over the Ohio River. Tear gas slowly spread to fill the alley to their right, the only way out of the kettle without returning the way they came or going through the cops. She tapped her earpiece. “Cancel shots fired, say again, shots _not_ fired, tear gas grenade launcher had weird echo. Kettled at Main and Hancock, stand by.” She wasn’t looking forward to whatever discipline Marie would give her for yelling ‘shots fired’ on comms without confirmation. 

A loudspeaker crackled on top of an armored police truck. “THIS IS AN UNLAWFUL ASSEMBLY. YOU ARE ORDERED TO DISPERSE IMMEDIATELY. THIS IS YOUR FIRST WARNING.”

“Then why block the way out?” Beth said to herself.

The rally had started peacefully, thousands of people marching calmly through a circuitous downtown route, singing, chanting, calling for justice. The only thing for the street medics to do was pass out water bottles. There was no threat, but they were being treated like enemies of the people. 

“The way we came is open. They’re probably just being dicks and making us go back the long way,” Chris said, stopping twenty yards short of the cops. The medics had learned the hard way that to cops, their large red crosses just made them targets. 

Beth wanted to cry at the injustice, but she steeled herself. “Let’s go,” she said. “Lead the way.” 

  
  


#

_New Orleans, LA_

_05/26/20_

Beth stretched as she walked into the kitchen of the manor house. The smells of bacon, coffee, and grits mingled in the air. Travis, a thirtysomething Black man and one of the house’s three candidates in training, turned from the coffeemaker with a mug in his hands and gracefully sunk to his knees, proffering the mug up to her at the perfect height for her to take it from him with minimal effort. She took a cautious sip, and it was just the way she liked it, heavy cream, no sugar. 

“I see we’ve been taking those lessons on anticipation to heart,” she said, and Travis smiled bashfully, then tried to return to a straight face before Beth noticed. “No, Travis, it’s ok to show pleasure when you are praised, unless told differently of course. Now then, your standing instructions are to have coffee ready to pour when I walk in, but not to pour it early so it doesn’t get cold. But this coffee was poured, with cream in it, when I walked in. May I ask why my coffee was ready?” 

She spoke evenly, conversationally, trying to keep Travis off-guard and get him to explain his process. At least she hoped so; she was gaining confidence by the day since beginning as Marie Salazon’s junior trainer. She was pretty sure she knew what had occurred; if so, it was a breakthrough for Travis in his fourth week of training.

“Well, Miss Beth, you told me to pay attention to routines and find ways to make those routines easier and smoother for my owner without violating standing instructions,” Travis said. He stammered a bit, but worked through it the way he was taught, and Beth carefully hid another smile. “You always close the door and brush your teeth when you awaken, and you always come to the kitchen afterwards for coffee. The bathroom door has a slight squeak to it, and it takes a minute to walk to the kitchen from your suite. So when I heard the bathroom door open the first time, I knew to get everything ready, and I poured your coffee when it opened again.” 

“Very good, Travis!” Beth said, and she watched her praise light up the man’s entire face. “And that ties in to our talk last week about using initiative and knowing when to try bending a rule to give better service, although as we covered last week you want to make sure you have a good read on your Owner, or in this case your trainer, and choose those moments of initiative carefully.” 

She took another sip of her coffee. “Miss Marie and I will take our breakfast on trays in her office. We’ve got a Zoom meeting to attend. After breakfast, attend to your morning chores unless we have other instructions for you when breakfast is served. 

“Yes, Miss Beth,” Travis said, still smiling. She turned and walked down the hallway to Marie’s office. She wasn’t a morning person, but today was going to be a good day. _For all my love of topping a good masochist, the more mundane parts of training are starting to grow on me_ she thought. Marie’s door was open a crack and she pushed it open, grinning ear-to-ear. “Miss Marie, wait until you hear...what’s wrong, ma’am?” Beth set her cup down and dropped to her knees next to her Trainer, who was slumped on the floor in front of the office sofa, her head in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably. 

“That poor boy,” Marie said through her tears, barely intelligible. “That poor, poor boy.” She looked at Beth, tears streaking her makeup and the lapels of her jacket. “He couldn’t breathe and he’s dead and…” 

“Ma’am, I’m here, whatever’s wrong, we’ll be OK,” Beth said. She didn’t know what to do; she was Marie’s junior and although they had developed an immediate rapport, Marie was a stickler for protocol and decorum, especially with trainees around. She shrugged; she trusted her instincts and this was a moment to break protocol. She gathered the older woman in her arms and Marie fell apart, clutching onto her younger, smaller junior trainer like a life raft, her tears floodwaters breaking through a dam. 

They sat there for minutes, Beth making soothing voices and trying to comfort her Trainer the best she could. She heard footsteps behind her and knew Travis and LaNadia, another of the trainees, had come in with their breakfast trays. “Hold on, Miss Marie, I’ll have Travis and LaNadia come back later with breakfast,” she said softly. 

“No, no,” Marie said, looking up at the two trainees. She collected herself, slowly, and stood up with a fragility Beth had never seen in the normally vibrant woman. She took a small step forward and burst into tears all over again. 

Beth grabbed the breakfast trays just in time as Marie gathered the two trainees into a rough embrace. She put them down on the credenza behind the trainees and finally noticed the news playing on the TV. As Marie wept, embracing the two trainees, Beth’s hand went to her mouth as she saw a scene of police brutality play out on the scene. ‘Man’s death at hands of Minneapolis Police shakes city, nation’ the chyron at the bottom of the screen read. She sunk back to her knees, watching the anchor discuss the killing, tears of her own falling to the hardwood floor like rain. 

_#_

_A drabble is a story of exactly 100 words._

_Louisville, KY_

_09/25/20_

“Do you need evac?” the dispatch operator asked through Beth’s earpiece. 

“Negative but have evac stand by,” Beth replied. “Headed west on Jefferson crossing Jackson, large police presence two blocks back following slowly but they seem to be letting us retrace our steps back to the park. Stand by, they’re closing in behind us, catching up.” 

People started to break into a run. “MIC CHECK!” an organizer yelled over a megaphone. “STAY WITH THE GROUP, Y’ALL, LET”S GET BACK SAFELY!” 

“Sick bastards think it’s funny to make these people panic,” she said to Chris, and he nodded grimly in reply. 

#

_Marketplace North American Region Zoom Meeting_

_05/29/20_

“It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” Layton Turner said. “Minneapolis is already in flames, and protests have broken out in New York, Atlanta, Louisville, Los Angeles...it’s spreading like wildfire, like Rodney King on a nationwide scale.”

Marie sat forward. “What we’re seeing here isn’t just George Floyd. Mr. Floyd is the straw that broke the camel’s back, but this is going to get a lot worse. What you’re seeing here is Black America snapping. We’ve had enough. Armaud Arbury was murdered and there’s no justice, no charges. Breonna Taylor was murdered, and there’s been no charges. I can name a hundred more names. Mr. Parker, this is an awkward time because of the Marketplace’s caution in regards to the pandemic, but what we’re seeing here is exactly the kind of situation that our proposal in 2018 was meant to address. I’d like to activate the Emergency Response clause effective today and start contacting our team rosters.”

Chris Parker folded his hands. “I’ve got some owners that are denying the pandemic is actually real, to the point where I’ve had to threaten drastic measures to protect our clients. I’ve got other owners that are being extremely cautious, which is, admittedly, closer to what we desire than the opposite. But the cautious ones aren’t going to want to send members of their household out into protests, and the ones that think it’s a hoax are going to call me a hypocrite for activating the response teams and pulling members of their household out for this. And that’s not even considering our conservative members who are going to see this as the Marketplace taking a political stance or being taken over by socialists or some such nonsense.”

Marie opened her mouth to reply, but Beth quickly hit the mute button on the laptop before she could speak. “Miss Marie, if I may. My uncle is absolutely on our side on this, losing your temper would be blue-on-blue fire. But he has to consider these factors.” Marie gave her what Beth had already come to know as ‘the look,’ but she nodded curtly and unmuted, letting Keisha finish laying out her thoughts. Beth handed her an iPad with some statistics on it and Marie read it over, then began speaking when Keisha finished. 

“Mr. Parker, just to throw in some data here, our more conservative members are the ones most likely to not accept the new contract clauses we have been using since the 2018 POC initiative, which means the percentage of people of color, and the percentage of clients signed up and trained to participate in our response teams, in their households is far lower than average and most of the people of color in their households are serving under contracts that were signed before those reforms, since most people of color are choosing to apply those clauses to their contracts since then. And while I don’t have hard data on this, most of the people thinking COVID is a hoax tend to be on the right as well. It’s still a delicate matter to address, but it does significantly lessen the direct impact and the hassles of activating clients that may be in those households, even if it doesn’t do much to ameliorate the potential drama.”

“And frankly, Mr. Parker, I think this is an opportunity as much as a minefield. Let’s face it, Owners are almost universally in the top 5% of wealth in this nation, and much of them in the 1%. These people are not revolutionaries. Many of them lean left, but they’re not leftists or socialists. But right now, after George Floyd’s murder, and the attention being given to the criminal justice system and the plight of people of color, even the center and center-left have been shocked out of complacency. There’s a lot of people who have never before really stopped to think about what life is like for us, who now see it.”

“The vast majority of our Owners, especially those who are ‘new blood’ in the last thirty to forty years, are not hardcore Trumpers; our screening process isn’t inherently ideological but a lot of the things we look at tend to screen out the right-wingers. So yes, we’ll get some pushback from the more conservative owners, and yes those conservative Owners tend to be influential and visible since we screen differently than we used to so they tend to be older or are legacies from multi-generational Marketplace families. But I think a lot of the more centrist to center-left Owners will be thrilled to see us taking action, especially since our Owner interview data shows that there’s a certain amount of ‘liberal guilt’ over participating in even a consensual form of slave-owning for many of those people. Maybe it doesn’t necessarily make much logical sense to feel that way, but psychologically, it makes our participation a slam-dunk in my opinion.”

Stuart, a Seattle-based Master Trainer and heir to the late Marcy Teodor’s Seattle-based Training House, popped up on the computer screen and began to speak. Beth smiled to herself; she’d been loaned to Stuart to help with the transition when Ms. Teodor passed away the year before and Stuart was elevated to Master Trainer. He was also the only Master Trainer she knew of to be actively involved in protests and leftist organizations, having almost lost his trainer status over his participation in the Occupy movement.

“Mr. Parker, members of the committee, thank you for allowing me to participate today. I’d like to emphasize a point Marie alluded to: This is an opportunity to put the Marketplace squarely on the right side of history. We’re an organization that, at its heart, serves those with a driving, inherent need to belong to someone else, to serve and be useful, as well as those who have the mindset, wherewithal, and resources to own, care for, and manage those people. Essentially, we’re a slave market, and the fact that we put a lot of effort into protecting our clients and making sure they are safe, cared for, well-managed, and consent to their place doesn’t change that. I think it’s absolutely on-brand for the 21st-century Marketplace to take a strong stand on this issue and to put our resources and wills to assisting with the Black Lives Matter movement, and frankly, any of our Owners that disagree are ones I won’t work with anymore and wouldn’t trust with the safety of the clients I am responsible for as a Trainer and agent, and would use all my influence to make sure no one else in Marcy’s line would do the same. I would question the motivation of those people to be a part of this organization; if they can’t take a stand for the descendants of chattel slaves, why would they do so for our current, consensual clients?”

Beth watched her uncle’s face as Stuart spoke; he was known as a bit of a personal protege to Chris Parker, but they’d clashed often professionally over Stuart’s idealism and lack of compromise on his personal ideals. _I don’t know why I bother, his poker face is just too damn good_ she thought to herself. She caught movement in her peripheral vision and looked down; two glasses of iced cafe au lait had appeared in front of her and Marie, and a plate of beignets in between them. She glanced over and Kitten, Marie’s slave and personal assistant/companion, was slipping out the door. _Kitten’s unobtrusive service is also too damn good_ she thought. Not for the first time, she reminded herself to indulge her curiosity and ask Marie about Kitten, as she’d caught enough to know their history extended back to when Marie was still in service and Kitten wasn’t even in the Marketplace, but this wasn’t the time. ( _note 4_ )

“By participating in these protests, we’re putting our money where our mouth is. I’ve already committed my house and our resources; I’ll actually be on the ground in Portland tonight, with my full staff. And I will commit all of our resources to a larger effort under the aegis of the POC trainer/spotter caucus, should it come to pass. I cannot in good conscience reconcile my personal beliefs with my status as a slave owner and trainer and a member of an organization devoted to consensual slavery if I am not doing everything in my power to fight for civil and human rights for all humans.”

Chris held up a finger, a signal to hold off on further comments, while he scrolled through data on the laptop computer in front of him. He made a gesture at a trainee off-screen and they knelt at his side while he talked to them with the mic muted, then ran off on whatever errand he’d sent them on. Then he began to speak. “This is not a democracy, but I’d like to hear the committee’s opinions. Let’s go around the horn. Max?”

“This is exactly what Layton, Keisha, and Marie’s Academy proposal was built for. I vote to activate the program,” Max Bloom, Chicago-based Master Trainer, said. 

“Like young Stuart, my House will be participating no matter what the overall committee decides. There’s nothing these riot cops can do to my slaves that I haven’t done worse to them,” Ken Mandarin said, and several people on the call laughed. “Yes.”

“I am obviously a yes,” Layton Turner said smoothly.

“I’m torn on this one,” Quentin Yardley said, softly. “ I can’t disagree with anything my colleagues have said about the importance of activism right now, but we are in a period when pandemic cases are peaking and I would be hard-pressed to know how to respond if an Owner confronted me about the hypocrisy of sending teams out when we’ve emphasized the importance of locking down. And I agree what happened to Mr. Floyd was barbaric, but at least in Atlanta, these types of things tend to flare up and die down quickly, so my fear is that we’ll burn a lot of credibility and goodwill with the owners and by the time we finish activating the program and getting teams deployed, this will die down. I fully support individual efforts, but I have to vote no on activating the response teams and pulling clients out of households at this time.” 

Beth glanced at Marie for her reaction, and her eyes flared but she kept her counsel. Stuart, however, was a different story. “Mr. Yardley, I dare say I’ve been to…”

“Stuart.” Chris Parker spoke quietly, evenly, but his voice was a katana cutting off Stuart’s impassioned statement at the knees. He didn’t need to say anything else; Stuart clearly wasn’t going to offer an apology for his outburst, but he didn’t dare push the issue. 

“I’m also a no,” Spiro, the agent representative to the committee, said. “We as an organization have nothing to do with slavery as practiced in American history, and to imply we have some responsibility because of it and disrupt the entire Marketplace with some half-baked scheme to go fight riot cops is absurd. As is the idea that we should go march against cops when most of them are good men and women doing a hard job. Do their lives not matter?”

Marie, Stuart, and Ken all lost their tempers simultaneously, their actual words unintelligible over each other’s voices. Beth didn’t even try to mute the mic this time; she did not want Marie’s anger redirected toward her. She glanced down at her phone, smiling as a text came through from her friend Kameko, Chris Parker’s junior trainer, visible just behind Chris on the computer screen observing just as Beth was. _Don’t you miss the simple days when we just had to worry about making sure Lord and Lady Southerby’s boots were clean?_ Kameko sent, referring to the time they spent in service together. Neither of them were wired to be natural slaves, but they spent two years serving the famous British training couple together as part of the “classic” training model espoused by the Regents.

_Did you totally forget the beating Lord S gave us when he caught us prank-calling the butler? NGL this is way more fun_ Beth sent back to Kameko and watched her stifle a laugh on the screen. 

_Unlike you, I appreciate a good whipping_ Kameko sent back. Beth made eye contact again and winked at Kameko, her eyes promising a thorough session next time they were together, only to slip her phone back into her pocket and cast her eyes down as Chris found the time to give Beth a stern look even as he waited for a moment to cut into the chaos. 

“That will be all,” Chris said, and Marie gathered herself and stopped talking but Spiro and Stuart showed no signs of slowing down. Chris sighed and pressed a couple buttons on his computer, muting them both. “This is unacceptable behavior from a room full of senior Marketplace professionals. Spiro, your comments were deliberately inflammatory. I’ll have one of my staff contact you to arrange a time for a private call to discuss this matter.” Chris pressed another button and Spiro disappeared entirely. “Stuart, Marie, you wouldn’t let a client push your buttons like this. In the future, you will let the chair handle inappropriate comments or outbursts. For this committee, that is me. Understood?”

“Yes, Chris,” the two Trainers chorused, Marie looking chastened, Stuart still fired up.

“After careful consideration of differing viewpoints, as well as talking to Danberry & Ellis’s North American VP this morning, I’m activating the emergency response program,” Chris said. “We have the framework built out for this, but we will have to make adjustments due to the pandemic. We need to plan for volunteers in the field to quarantine for 10-14 days after they are done, based on risk assessment and Owner preference. Also, for the Owners more cautious about COVID, we’ll try to keep their people in support roles where they can stay masked and distanced.”

“Also, Quentin, I disagree. This is reminiscent of the Occupy protests; it could go on for a while. So before we start working through the notification and activation process, I want a plan to stagger volunteer participation. If we put everyone who’s trained and signed up into the field for months, we don’t have the personnel to cover their positions, not to mention the inconvenience to their Owners, especially with a two-week quarantine period built-in. I want plans built out for two, three, and four teams. Assume the first team to Minneapolis, probably the second to New York, research out the two other cities most likely to need help and plan for there.”

“We’ve done the work to plan this out, thanks to Marie and Keisha. We’ll have to spend more time than planned reassuring the Owners, but we have a road map. If we’re going to do this it needs to be effective and that means we need to be out in the field for the weekend, at least in Minneapolis. If you’re going out to protest tonight, check-in first and see what needs to be done so we can deploy en masse tomorrow.”

“If you have any questions, call my major-domo. Make this happen,” Chris said, and the chat window closed. 

Marie spun her chair to face Beth, plucking a beignet from the plate as she rotated. “First off, flirt with Kameko Sakai on your own time, not when you’re on a conference call with the Trainer of Trainers. Even if he is your uncle, even if it is only a Zoom call, when you’re in a Marketplace meeting, especially as a junior trainer, your job is to listen, learn, take notes, and be aware of any action items that apply to you or me. Understood?”

“I understand, Miss Marie.”

“Second, here’s your tasking for the next few hours,” Marie said, and waited for Beth to pick up her pen and notepad. “Tell Kitten I need an inventory of our walkie-talkies, medic field packs, and site kits and have her inventory everything against the packing lists and make sure they’re stocked. If we’re short anything, have her make a list. I’ll be sending her out to shop this afternoon, as I believe we only have sixteen field packs and two site kits and it sounds like we may need more. Have her take the Suburban, and have Travis chauffeur her. Make _sure_ you’ve returned Travis’s driver’s license to him before they leave, make sure Kitten remembers to keep the receipts because she forgot the last two times and I don’t have time to correct her today, and tell her to write a brief report on Travis’s driving skills and comportment for me when I have time to look at it. If he needs to take a driving course before we can add that skill to his file, I want to know before we deploy. 

“I need lists as soon as possible of the following: everyone who’s completed the 20-hour street medic training you arranged for, all Marketplace slaves with medical, security, police, or military experience who are on the response team list, and a third list of personnel derived from any other search terms you think of that may be applicable in a civil unrest scenario. Don’t wait to get it all together before handing it over to me, bring me hard copies of each list as you complete them.”

“Third, I want you to get with Kameko and Christopher LaGuardia and work out your leadership and support structure plans for deploying street medic and protester support teams based on what Chris Parker outlined. If we do two teams, who is on team one, who is on team two. If we do three teams, etc. We’ll worry about what teams go where later, so make your decisions based on experience and capabilities, not location. And make sure everyone you pencil in is actually available; we need that in place before we can decide anything on clients since no client is going to be out in the streets without a trainer, spotter, etc. with them. Their Owners are trusting us to loan their property to us, we have to take care of them.”

“Oh, and Lord Southerby mentioned to me the other night that as calm as you are under stress, you’re always a bucket of nerves when you have time to think about a stressful situation before it happens, especially the night before. So pick out one of the trainees for use and block out a couple hours after dinner to have some fun with them.”

“Thank you, Miss Marie,” Beth said, smiling at the last bit. She’d gotten a new strap-on last week and didn’t think she’d get to use it until her and Kameko’s next weekend together. She stood, bowed formally, and left the room in search of Kitten.

#

_A double-drabble is a story of 200 words._

_Louisville, KY_

_09/25/20_

“Three hours to curfew,” Chris said as they sat down on a stone wall in Jefferson Square Park, the small downtown park the protest had occupied for months. “Do you want to go back to the church, or maybe hit up the safe house? I think most people are just gonna chill here until the march back to the church before curfew. Things should be calm.”

“I’ve got a box lunch in my pack. I even grabbed one for you. It’s a beautiful afternoon and there’s good energy here.” Beth looked around; from the park, the police and National Guard presence was far enough back they could pretend it wasn’t there, as long as no one looked at the county jail catty-corner on the southwest side, surrounded by concrete barriers across the street and a knot of National Guardsmen on each side sitting and standing around their Humvees.

“Besides, I think tonight’s going to be bad, “ Beth said after spending a minute soaking up the beauty of the gathering in the park. “They were rattling their sabers, but the way they pulled back? I’m worried about getting everyone to safety tonight.” Chris just nodded and unpacked his box lunch.  
  
  
Footnotes:

1 - Kettling is a police anti-protester tactic that involves police sealing off an area using terrain and large police cordons and attempting to break the wills of protest groups using mass arrests, deployment of tear gas and rubber bullets, etc.   
2 - Code-switching: the practice of alternating between two or more languages or varieties of language in conversation. In this context, switching between ‘standard’ English and African-American Vernacular English (AAVE)  
3 - See short story ‘Transcendence’ by Jamie Thorsen, included in [No Safewords 2: A Marketplace Fan Anthology](https://www.amazon.com/No-Safewords-Marketplace-Fan-Anthology-ebook/dp/B00B05LIJQ/ref=sr_1_6?dchild=1&keywords=no+safewords&qid=1607312944&s=digital-text&sr=1-6MB414LM) edited by Laura Antoniou.  
4 - See short story ‘Pearls In The Deep Blue Sea’ by Jamie Thorsen, included in [No Safewords: A Marketplace Fan Anthology](https://www.amazon.com/No-Safewords-Marketplace-Fan-Anthology-ebook/dp/B00B05LIJQ/ref=sr_1_6?dchild=1&keywords=no+safewords&qid=1607312944&s=digital-text&sr=1-6MB414LM) edited by Laura Antoniou. 


	2. No Peace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Marketplace - a secret world underneath the fabric of our own where the dreams of those who wish to be owned in consensual slavehood can come true. But no man or group is an island, and sometimes the world demands that even those who live outside the lines take a stand.
> 
> Beth Mizrahi, niece of legendary Marketplace trainer Chris Parker, and Marie Salazon, A Black woman first and a Marketplace trainer second, have spent years planning for how to make the Marketplace an ally for BIPOC individuals in and out of their hidden world. Their shock and dismay at the murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis Police department gives way to determination to help and they set their plan into motion. But even with the support of Chris Parker and other Marketplace figures, can they truly make a difference in the fight against police oppression and brutality in 2020 America?

_Atlanta, GA_

_05/29/20 - 3 pm_

> _You guys OK up there?_ \- text message, Beth -> Kameko

Beth sent the text and slipped her phone in her pocket, sitting on a low brick wall as crowds gathered in Centennial Olympic Park. She pulled a bottle of Gatorade from her bag and opened it, draining it in less than thirty seconds. Her partner, a former German Army combat medic who’d worn a Marketplace collar for six years, stood next to her, watching the environment. “Sit down and take a break, Hans. Seriously, we’ve got a minute to relax.”

“I am here to keep you safe, ma’am,” Hans rumbled. 

“My name is Beth in the field, Hans,” Beth said for the third time that day. “Or, fuck, Yael, I guess, got to get used to that. And we’re partners, we’re doing the same job. Sit,” she said, letting a slight edge of command enter her voice. He sat, and she handed him a Gatorade.

> _No but safe. This is bad. American cops are psychos_ \- text message Kameko, -> Beth (selfie attached)
> 
> _Is that blood on ur helmet_ \- text message Beth -> Kameko
> 
> _Its not mine. It’s been ugly up here. I need ur touch. I’m scared but I’m safe and we’re sticking together.You OK?_ \- Text message Kameko -> Beth
> 
> _Mostly peaceful so far_ \- text message Beth -> Kameko

She’d never seen Kameko anything but radiant before, even covered in manure mucking out the Southerby stables by hand the time they got caught after borrowing a pair of horses to go make out in the woods. The selfie she sent… Beth suddenly regretted their decision to have Kameko and her lead separate teams. 

An Army green helicopter flew over Centennial Olympic Park from behind Beth, setting down on a helipad across the park and disgorging fatigue-clad soldiers. She’d never seen a sky so blue. And she was terrified, because she’d watched livestreams of the previous night. She knew it would be bad, and she'd heard enough stories from her dads, one of whom was an Israeli Defense Forces veteran, to know she didn’t know how bad it would be until she experienced it. Impulsively, she tapped out another message. 

> _I love you Kameko please be safe until i c u again_ \- text message Beth -> Kameko

> _did you rilly just tell me u <3 me 4 the first time by txt_ \- text message Kameko-> Beth
> 
> _I guess I did. *shrug*_ \- text message Beth -> Kameko
> 
> _I love u 2. Be safe til i tell u in prsn. gotta go_ \- text message Kameko -> Beth 

Kameko's reply included a selfie, this time of her smiling and making a heart symbol with her hands. And despite the fear, the nerves, the stress, Beth had never felt a moment to be so beautiful. 

_5:30 pm_

“Dispatch to all medic teams, be advised ARM states massive police presence forming up near the stadium, about one-quarter mile west of your location. They’re sealing off the south and west. We might be able to get you evac north if things go bad, keep us posted.”

“Things are fairly calm, dispatch, but we’ll keep you posted,” Beth replied.

“ARM?” Hans asked as he walked across the park, next to Beth. The ‘official’ protest had ended a few minutes before, over a thousand people gathering in the park in silence, with their fists in the air. Now the crowd was fragmenting quickly, with a lot of pent-up energy to spend.

“Atlanta Revolutionary Medics. They’re the Atlanta street medic collective,” Beth said. “Our dispatcher is on comms with them. Remember those two street medics we met earlier? They’re from ARM.” Ahead, they heard chaos, and Beth picked up her pace despite the weight of her backpack. “Remind me to get a smaller pack for next time, these ones the organization bought us are almost as big as I am,” she huffed.

They trotted up to the throng of people in front of the CNN Center. A line of riot cops stood along Centennial Olympic Drive, clear riot shields out, while protesters screamed at them. The commotion was gathering a bigger crowd, things snowballing rapidly. 

“FUCK 12” “QUIT YOUR JOB!” “NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE!” plastic bottles flew out of the crowd toward the police line.

“Dispatch, this is Yael. Be advised things are getting a bit tense up here. Crowd’s restless, line of cops near CNN building. Where’s Redwood and Omaha?”

“Yael, Dispatch, this is Redwood. We’re on our way up now, there was a scuffle down here by the Aquarium,“ John, Quentin’s junior spotter, said over comms. 

Hans was, by all his reports, a very devoted and well-trained slave, serving as a bodyguard for a U.S. Senator who belonged to an old Marketplace family. One thing he wasn’t, however, was timid about doing his duties. “Get behind me,” he snapped, roughly interposing himself between Beth and the police line.

“Hans,” Beth snapped. 

“Ma’am, this feels just like Basra right before things would get bad. I will not stop you from helping people but I will not let you be harmed,” Hans said, without taking his eyes off the epicenter of the confrontation. 

A firework was thrown from somewhere in the crowd toward the police line. Two protesters ventured into the no man’s land between police and activists, yelling and waving signs, and they were swarmed, handcuffed, and pulled away before anyone could react. Beth balled her fists, but she knew they were powerless.

“This is a battle of wills,” Hans said. “They break the wills of those afraid to get arrested, reduce numbers for future. It’s not supposed to be like this in America.”

“It’s always been like this in America,” Beth said. “Not that I’ve seen it, but you should hear my uncle’s stories of the cops when he was growing up.”

Hans glanced at her in shock. “Wait, isn’t your uncle…”

“Shhh!” Beth said, winking.

The protest group had backed up a bit after the arrests, and the police line stayed solid, silent as the yelling continued and the drones circled. Beth and Hans stayed on the periphery of the crowd, Hans fully in the zone, Beth unsettled by the strange, oscillating energy of the crowd. 

_7:32 pm_

Windows smashed in a melodic counterpoint to angry chants and the shirtless Black man waving a huge Black Lives Matter flag on the top of the big sign in front of the CNN headquarters building like a Marine on Iwo Jima _Damn he’s hot_ but then a quadcopter camera drone buzzed the crowd overhead and she touched Hans’ shoulder to let him know it was ok because she just knew he was about to tackle her to protect her but then another tear gas canister popped off down the street and without even a word Hans started bulling through the crowd, making a hole for them, and then a scream and someone yelled “Medic!” and Hans changed course, Beth following in his wake. 

A kid barely old enough to shave writhed on the ground, clutching his ankle. Beth hit her knees and yanked her trauma pouch open, grabbing a sealed pack of gauze. “I’m a volunteer street medic, do I have your consent to help?” she said in a rush as she ripped the pouch open. 

“Fucccck. Yes, lady, cool,” he replied. She slapped the gauze pad onto his shin and applied pressure. It looked like something hit him right where the bone was closest to skin and then she caught a whiff of pepper spray even through her respirator and _fuck they actually shot him in the leg with a pepper ball_ Either a cop had really bad aim or, more likely, was using them improperly just because they could. Like rubber bullets, they were designed to be shot at the ground, not directly at anyone.

“Hans, mask,” Beth said, and Hans passed her a disposable mask from his own pack without taking his eyes off the scene around them. Even Hans was getting rocked by the crowd of people reacting to the chaos, but another pair of street medics they didn’t know came trotting up and joined him in holding the space. 

“Can you put this mask on?” she yelled over the crowd noise. _Going out without a mask in a pandemic jesus christ_ he put it on but didn’t cover his nose _Fuck it close enough._ “Hans, antiseptic?” Hans already had a packet of it in his hand and passed it down. “I’m going to clean your wound; this might sting.” As she ripped open the packet, the clatter of metal hitting pavement and hiss of gas emitting from a canister caught her attention. The canister rolled right past the knot of medics; Hans tried to kick it back where it came from.

“STOP GASSING US, WE’RE FUCKING MEDICS!” one of the two newcomers yelled at an advancing cluster of policemen approaching from the side of the CNN center.

“Help me get him up!” Beth yelled at Hans over the chaos. “We need to move you away from the gas and the cops,” she said urgently to the kid she was treating and he nodded. Hans and Beth put one arm each around the kid’s shoulders. “Make us a path!” she yelled at the two other medics and they led the trio through the crowd.

_7:39 pm_

Beth felt her phone vibrate and slid it out of her pocket. 

> _im ok rt now. Marching up FDR. U ok?_ \- Text message Kameko -> Beth

> _Scared but ok. LUV U MEAN IT BE SAFE._ \- Text message Beth -> Kameko

Beth sent the message as a voice began to speak in her earpiece. “Redwood to Yael, there’s a large group of protesters breaking off from CNN Center and headed east to block the interstate. Just talked to ARM and they’re trying to get a team free to join them, but right now they have no medic coverage. Dispatch said it’s your call whether we should go with them,” John said. 

Beth rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Yael here. You may, but see if Dispatch can get you a ride over there from somewhere near the park, that’s a solid half mile away at least. And please be careful. I think protesters blocking an interstate is a real bad idea but we’re not here to police them. Just don’t risk your lives to try and help someone being really dumb.”

“Understood,” John said. 

_8:11 pm_

A police car practically exploded in the middle of the crowd, thirty feet away. The crowd roared, bricks going through windows, screaming and chanting and the soft WHUMP of tear gas canisters going off around the corner and _oh thank god it was just catching fire i thought it exploded._ The thought made her laugh enough to suppress her fear for a minute. _Just a police car catching fire. Like that’s totally a normal thing._

_8:29 pm_

Two more windows broke in quick succession and she wanted to take the bricks from these kids’ hands, beg them to stop, plead that they were playing right into the cops’ hands and justifying all the violence committed against peaceful protesters, but someone had already stood in front of the windows and almost take a brick to the face for their trouble. They weren’t going to listen. No one was going to listen, not in this place and time. 

As the sun crept toward the western horizon, smoke and shadows and gas combined in a haze only diluted by the vanishing light, as if everything out of arm’s reach was on the far side of a dirty plate glass window. The police car was still burning behind the police line between the CNN center and the College Football Hall of Fame, a protective ring of cops protected its carcass now, like closing a barn door after leading all the pigs to the slaughterhouse. Plastic bottles, fireworks, and tear gas canisters arced through the air back and forth between the combatant groups; the sound of broken glass and the acrid taste of smoke provided their own melodies in this dystopic symphony. 

“I’m good, Hans,” she said, finally. “The ibuprofen is finally starting to kick in.” Hans reached a hand down and she let him pull her to her feet. She picked her backpack up, refusing to show Hans how much it hurt to put the weight back on her frame. “Let’s go.” 

_8:47pm_

“You’re kidding, right?” Beth said, halting in the middle of the crowd. 

“Redwood and Omaha are in police custody,” dispatch said. “They were posted up on the shoulder and a car zoomed up like they were going to drive into protesters. Team two went to help and that’s right when GSP showed up. Didn’t do a damn thing about the aggressive drivers but they took about thirty people into custody, including our two people.”

“Copy. Make sure Cardinal and Fleur know about this, then check with ARC and see if any of their people got scooped. Work with ATL jail support to make sure their bail is covered, CC our attorneys but at this stage I think we’re better off working through the locals. Arrange a donation to ATL jail support and/or bail fund at least twice as much as what it costs them to get our people out.” The sound of shattering glass cut through the constant hubbub of the crowd. “Gotta go, will update when I can.” 

Without even waiting, Hans turned and began plowing a path through the crowd for Beth to follow, headed toward the sound of the guns.

_9:02pm_

The pair of cops emerged from the cloud of smoke drifting from the lobby of the CNN center and grabbed the young shirtless Black man from earlier roughly by each arm and the crowd around him reacted in chaos, some stepping forward, some stepping away. 

Beth couldn’t ever quite explain how or why she did it, not even when she was standing at attention in a corner of the safe house the next day while Marie methodically gave her the worst chewing-out of her life. She couldn’t explain how she knew it would be ok, how she evaluated everything as quickly as she did. She just did it. A glance to the smoke-billowing broken windows, a realization of broken sightlines and chaotic cover, and Beth shocked herself by stepping in and hip-checking one of the cops, breaking the officer’s grip on the young man. It was enough for the man to tug himself free from the other cop, and he bolted.

Beth was right behind him, racing for the comparative anonymity of the crowd; Hans watched for a second, waiting to see if the cops would chase, prepared to cover his partner’s retreat, but they shook their heads and stepped back inside. He turned to pursue his partner, sneaking looks behind him as he followed her into the crowd.

_9:26 pm_

The firework flew over the no man’s land between the protesters outside and the cops inside, arcing over the broken glass in front of the CNN center and detonating right in front of the police line. Sparks and flares erupted like a volcanic pinwheel, arcing and spinning and chaos erupted, and almost reflexively tear gas shot back toward the crowd in a Napoleonic broadside. Hans hadn’t let Beth near the front line since her daring de-arrest, resisting any attempt to move forward with the cautious and professional recalcitrance of an experienced Marketplace slave trained and serving as a security specialist. Beth knew she could override him; but she also knew who he answered to.

The first wave of gas began to expand out from the front line, and then just as the crowd began to surge back, a second salvo arced over the crowd, landing farther back and hemming them in, only narrow escape lanes available. The crowd surged to the few lanes free of tear gas; some got pushed into the expanding crowds by their own momentum or the swirling chaos of the situation. Another salvo of tear gas roared out, this one indiscriminate, further triggering the varying fight or flight reflexes of the protesters.

Beth slid her respirator over her face, checking the seal, and glanced at Hans to see he’d already done so. They headed in.

_9:29pm_

Rinse, wipe, repeat. She was helping her third tear gas victim in as many minutes when she felt a sharp pain to her left knee; her entire leg buckled underneath her _Fuck I’ve been shot_ and she tumbled to the ground.

She clutched her knee, but there was no hole in her black tactical pants even though it hurt like hell. _Did I tear a ligament or something?_ She gingerly pulled her pants leg up; the inside of her knee was bleeding and starting to swell up. 

“Rubber bullet,” Hans said, picking up a blunted blue cylinder from the ground next to her. “We need to move, cops coming.” He scooped her up fireman-style and headed up Centennial, away from the raging battle. 

_9:31pm_

> _Txt when u can luv. shits bad in atl im ok but nd to knw ur ok_ \- text message Beth -> Kameko

Beth sent the text and drank another Gatorade as Hans tried to stabilize her knee well enough for her to be mobile.

“Thank you, Hans,” Beth said, touching his shoulder. “I don’t know how I could do this without you having my six.” She felt closer to the burly slave than she ever had before with someone she’d known for less than half a day. _All that stuff I read in slave interviews about trauma bonding was no joke_. 

“It’s my job, ma’am,” he replied, wrapping another compression layer around her knee. With his attention on her knee, Beth was the first to notice the squat, armored vehicles roll out of an alley down the street. 

“Are those fucking tanks?” she asked, and Hans glanced up. 

“Armored personnel carriers,” he corrected Beth. The crowd began to flow away from the APCs rolling up the street from Mercedes-Benz Stadium. “Can you put weight on your knee?” he asked. 

She took his hand and stood up. “Yes,” she said, and took a pair of ibuprofen with the last of her Gatorade.

“No more Ibuprofen for a while, you just took some at 7:30,” Hans said. He quickly pulled several bottles of water out of her pack and put them in his, then handed her the lightened bag. “Let’s move.” He took off at a rapid pace, Beth limping behind him. 

_9:55 pm_

The crowd surged back as another round of tear gas canisters clattered onto the plaza and a burly man bumped into Beth hard. She went down hard, twisting to take the impact on her ass instead of her knees. 

Hans turned, hackles up, but the man was already reaching down to help Beth up. She took his hand and pulled herself to her feet, but her knee buckled again and Hans was at her side in a millisecond, stabilizing her. He nodded at the apologetic man and helped her limp away.

“Dispatch, this is Dusseldorf. Yael is injured, we’re mobile but she’s limping. We need evac, we’re at Centennial and Marietta. We’re calling it a night.”

“Meet evac at Walton and Cone, Dusseldorf,” Dispatch said. “Be advised that Fleur got into town about twenty minutes ago, she’ll be waiting for debrief.” 

“Fuck me,” Beth said softly. "Marie's going to kill me." 

_10:22 pm_

Beth had been in plenty of five-star hotels in her time in the Marketplace, but she’d never gotten stared at like tonight, not even the time her and Kameko accidentally covered themselves in glitter at Kaleigh trying to arrange a prank on a fellow trainee. She limped into the walnut-walled lobby of the D&E Peachtree Arms leaning heavily on Hans, both of them covered in blood and sweat, reeking of tear gas and pepper spray, as the front desk attendant rushed to meet them. 

“May I help you, Sir, ma’am?” he asked, with a definite undertone that suggested they were about to be encouraged to leave. 

Beth’s practiced eye caught the barest hint of a telltale collar under his tuxedo shirt and she grimaced. “Unless you want to be dropped into a full present in the middle of the lobby, followed by explaining to your Owner exactly why you were placed under discipline publicly for profound disrespect to…” a

Hans cut her off as the attendant slowly paled. “We’re guests of Ms. Salazon in the Woodruff Suite. Our luggage is already here.”

“Absolutely. Our elevators are right this way,” the attendant said, ushering them across the grand atrium while other guests stared after them.

Beth exhaled. “Thank you, Hans, I should have controlled my temper better there. Marie has so many reasons to kill me.”

“My pleasure, ma’am,” Hans said. As Beth went to correct his address, he spoke again, quickly. “If it pleases you, ma’am,as we are back on Marketplace soil it may be advisable to return to a more standard level of protocol.”

“You’re quite right,” Beth said as they stepped into the elevator. The doors closed and Hans pressed the button for the top floor while continuing to support Beth. The elevator began to move.

“Thank you for keeping me safe, Hans. And for looking out for me when I let stress get to me.”

“If I may, ma’am? You’re not the first person to be… off-balance after your first time in combat,” Hans said. “My service is of the sort where helping someone through that is not outside of my realm of comfort.”

“Combat?” Beth asked.

“That was combat, ma’am. Basra felt safer than tonight did,” Hans replied.

Beth was saved from a reply by the elevator sliding to a halt on the top floor. The door opened into a small receiving room. A keycard rested on a table next to the door. 

They walked into the penthouse suite together. “I understand. Look, Chris, your niece just walked in the door and I need to debrief. I’ll call you back once I know more.” Marie ended the call and turned to the two battered street medics. 

“Hans, sit her down on the couch and go get yourself cleaned up. You’ll be sleeping in the yellow room, but I’ll probably be in to debrief you after I talk to Beth here, so don’t pass out just yet,” Marie said. Hans nodded and helped Beth to the couch, then made himself scarce. 

“First off, before you ask, Kameko is fine. Her phone got smashed but as of ten minutes ago they’re on the way back to Chris’s,” Marie said, and Beth felt a thousand pounds of tension off her shoulders. She’d hoped for a message before the long chewing out she knew Marie would give her so she wouldn’t be worried, but at least now she knew why Kameko hadn’t responded. 

“Now that I have your full focus, let’s review tonight. I have an apprentice spotter and a client in jail, the hotel manager just texted me with a request that you leave his staff alone and that you use the service entrance by the loading dock anytime you enter his hotel, you’ve managed to injure yourself, and Mr. Parker apparently saw some riveting footage of you on CNN fighting a pair of riot cops. What in the _hell_ were you doing? You’re a goddamned medic, we don’t need to deal with you getting a felony!”

Beth opened her mouth to respond. “That was a rhetorical question,” Marie said, cutting her off. “This is a marathon, not a sprint, girl.” Marie’s phone buzzed and she glanced at it. “Hold on, and be grateful that your injury keeps me from putting you on your knees.” She walked away, talking into her phone, and Beth sighed. It was going to be a long night.


End file.
